ProtoShare 3.0

July 7th, 2009

ProtoShare is a fully web based prototyping tool developed by a company called Site9. The third version of this product has been released in early April which brought forth improvements to performance as well as to collaborative aspects. ProtoShare offers such features as page templates, collaborative discussion, interactive prototyping, support for multiple states, drag and drop interface elements, and export functions.

A few features of ProtoShare also make it stand out from other tools on the market. For one, ProtoShare offers increased reusability of interface elements with the help of clippings. Clippings allow to save and store common pieces of an interface onto a flexible clipboard, which can then be pasted and repasted easily wherever required. Another interesting direction in which ProtoShare is moving into is by allowing to attach custom CSS styling to elements, and in turn providing greater flexibility. Being web based, ProtoShare also allows you to save your work online.

A few weeks ago, ProtoShare has also began experimenting with an iPhone prototyping mode that is currently in beta. By allowing users to export their prototypes into HTML, the software makes it easy to preview the resulting work in an actual iPhone. A detailed post on this topic can be found here here.

Wow — I'm surprised no one else has commented here. I've been using ProtoShare for about three weeks and already I can't imagine life without it. We've got three projects in our shop that are starting with PS and it's cut my prototyping time in half, at least. Very intuitive — even has keyboard shortcuts and undo. Give it a try — you won't regret it!

I´d like to point out thta Justinmind Prototyper, a wireframing tool for hi-fi dynamic & interactive prototypes, also offers reusable template, master & widget elements, so that you can respect company styleguide, as well as mobile widgets (Iphone, Android, Blackberry).